Luge slides back to 2010 Olympics venue

Felix Loch has mastered the Whistler Sliding Centre.

The German won the Olympic gold medal at the track during the 2010 Games and he was atop the podium again Dec. 9 during the second International Luge Federation world cup stop of the 2011-2012 season.

Loch’s combined time of 1:36.48 was 0.278 better than fellow German Johannes Ludwig. David Moller, the 2010 Olympics silver medallist, completed the German podium sweep.

“I like the fast track here, the start is good for me, it's not too steep. It's good for all Germans. The sled was today very fast,” Loch said. “The track became more safe, those nations that are not on the level of Germany, they are learning and getting better on this track.”

Calgary's Sam Edney was fifth in 1:37.061. Edney's seventh-place in the Olympics at Whistler was a best for a Canadian in men’s singles.

“Five Germans and a Canadian (among the last six) -- it's clear to me where they have that edge, at the start,” Edney said. “This has got to be the best track in the world. The feeling you get when you're sliding down you can't express it, the speed and that feeling of that adrenaline rush. Hearing the crowd as you're sliding down is one of the coolest things you can ever feel as you're sliding.”

Italy's Armin Zoggeler, the 2002 and 2006 Olympic champion and bronze medallist in 2010, was a disappointing 13th.

The first FIL world cup in Whistler was in 2009 when Moller won gold, Zoggeler silver and Loch bronze. Ludwig was fourth and Edney 12th.

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In the men's doubles, 2010 Olympic champions Andreas and Wolfgang Linger of Austria won gold, beating countrymen Peter Penz and Georg Fischler by 0.244. Italians Christian Obsertotz and Patrick Gruber were third.

Linger and Linger established a doubles track record of 41.255 seconds. Penz and Fischler, however, are FIL leaders after two rounds of the nine-stop World Cup tour, which continues next weekend in Calgary. The Lingers are second.

Canada's Tristan Walker and Justin Smith were 10th.

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No sliders from Georgia have competed in the first two rounds of the FIL world cup. But Georgia’s flag was displayed in memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili.

The 21-year-old died after crashing near the end of his last training run on Feb. 12, 2010, the opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics. A small flag marks the spot where the tragedy happened.

A bigger flag is outside the track offices, near the Olympic podium.

The start area for women’s races continues to be used, as it was the day after Kumaritashvili’s crash. A safety audit ordered by the British Columbia Coroners Service was conducted by the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. The results are expected to be made public in the first quarter of 2012.

During the summer of 2010, concrete on curves 12 to 16 was modified with the blessing of FIL and the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation. More changes are coming.

Whistler Sliding Centre begins its second season of public skeleton rides on Dec. 16. On Dec. 22, it launches a public bobsled program. The two-hour courses are $149. The bobsled experience includes professional pilots. Retired Canadian legend Pierre Lueders, the 1998 Olympic champion and two-time world champion, will be among the guest pilots this winter.

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The official attendance wasn’t announced. In diplomatic terms, other things must have occupied the collective interest of Whistler locals and visitors. There were more athletes and reporters at the end of the track than there were fans.
Whistler is host of the 2013 world championships.

Furlong in for a rough ride

Bob McKeown wore number 42 as a centre with the Canadian Football League's Ottawa Rough Riders in the early 1970s but he couldn't relax and watch the big four-down game on Super Sunday. That didn't matter, he had to do what he could to preserve the Big Story.

The Fifth Estate reporter was scheduled to interview John Furlong, who happens to be a former Gaelic football player, on Monday in Toronto, when the VANOC CEO was kicking-off a tour to promote his memoir, Patriot Hearts. Furlong, however, wanted to see the documents CBC obtained first, so he could be prepared.

"We arranged to meet him in the lobby of the Royal York," McKeown told me on Feb. 10. "Usually we don't show people things before interviews but this only seemed fair."

The documents are the now famous emails from March 2009 that quote Furlong as being concerned about safety of the Whistler Sliding Centre.

“An athlete gets badly injured, or worse, and I think the case could be made we were warned and did nothing."

Less than a year later, Nodar Kumaritashvili died on opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Furlong was grief-stricken, but the emails question whether VANOC was guilty of ignoring warnings.

McKeown found out VANOC vice-president of communications Renee Smith-Valade went into damage control mode and convinced the board of directors to leak the documents to official broadcaster CTV and sponsor Globe and Mail.

So McKeown went on-air during the National on Sunday night, which is why he missed the Super Bowl. Normally, he said, a documentary airing on a Friday night would be edited by a Sunday. Not this case. He re-interviewed Furlong, added another interview with David Kumaritasvhili, the victim's father, and talked to former Chief Coroner Diane Rothon.

It will all be revealed on Friday, Feb. 11 at 9 p.m. (and repeated Sunday at 10 a.m.) on the Fifth Estate's Death at the Olympics.

"We've done a lot of stories which have been contentious never had one of the characters in the story leaking the material to other people," he said.

McKeown said he "admired the job (Furlong) did on the Games very much."

"He's a very direct guy in certain ways. Once he knew we had these documents, though he was also sharing them with others, he lived up to his commitment to talk to us."

But Furlong was not entirely forthcoming because "there are topics he clearly wants to avoid."

Though ruled an accident by the B.C. Coroners Service, Kumaritashvili's relative inexperience and the speed, difficulty and G-forces of the track were the the contributing factors. But FIL blamed driver error.

"Three of the four were directly related to the design of the track," McKeown said.

Furlong claimed that VANOC did all safety modifications the two federations agreed upon.

"They didn't," McKeown said. "When he says they did everything they (FIL and FIBT) asked, that's not really true. They did everything they both signed-off on.

"To the best of our knowledge those modifications were not made. I've asked John Furlong directly several times, this last interview I asked him seven times."

Death at the Olympics includes interviews with outspoken American luger Tony Benshoof and Patrick Singleton, a luger from Bermuda, whose Bermuda shorts are on display at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.

Be warned, the documentary includes footage of the crash and some of the grisly aftermath. The sound of Kumaritashvili striking an unpadded pole still makes me shiver. But McKeown said it is necessary to tell the story.

"That's one of those calls, I fully understand people that say why do we have to watch this again, we only show it in action once and otherwise we rely on the stills to do it," McKeown said. "But to understand what happened, how it happened and the role the track played you really have to see that unfortunately."

Slippery Slope

Just when John Furlong Incorporated -- author and public speaker -- was set to launch, the facade is beginning to fade.

The CEO of VANOC spent the first day of a book tour Feb. 6 in damage control mode, trying to explain what he meant in a now-famous email written March 24, 2009, less than a year before the death of a Georgian luger on opening day..

“An athlete gets badly injured, or worse, and I think the case could be made we were warned and did nothing."

Contrast that with what he says in Patriot Hearts, Furlong's memoir:

"We had confronted make-believe plane crashes, riots, major injuries, mustard gas -- you name it and we had prepared for it. But never in our wildest dreams did we imagine the death of an athlete on opening day,”

In a Feb. 6 media teleconference, he said:

"We had this track and this one sport, not both of them, was saying it was faster than they wanted. I wanted to make sure any obligation that we had we were carrying it out properly and professionally and doing what was necessary. And we were."

"Before the Games started, the sports signed off on the track and if for example FIL or FIBT wanted something new or different done, they would've asked us or should've asked us, but they didn't."

"If the sports felt it wasn't safe they would've told us. If they felt it wasn't safe and didn't tell us, that would be an entirely different thing. But I believe and I think our teem believed, and everybody believed, it was ready for competition."

So what you can take away from all this is that Furlong and VANOC acted as if they were the servants to foreign sports organization masters. Yes, it's proper to build to the specifications of the sports. But it is even more important to ensure that taxpayers of British Columbia and Canada were served. The track was, after all, paid for by hardworking Canadians and not the bobsled, skeleton or luge bodies.

Hindsight is 20/20. VANOC should have hired an independent consultant to gauge the situation.

The "VANOC way" has always been to deny, defer and delay. The organization never wanted to be seen to be losing. In this case, it's shirking responsibility and pointing the finger at FIL and FIBT. Those organizations deserve to be held accountable. So too, VANOC.

The new revelations could open VANOC to a lawsuit. And it needn't happen immediately. British Columbia's statute of limitations is two years, which means David Kumaritashvili could hire a lawyer and file a claim as late as Feb. 12, 2012.

What he knew when he received a $150,000 insurance settlement is different from what he knows now. VANOC knew there was a danger and feared it could be negligent.

CBC, which uncovered this information, promises more on Fifth Estate, Feb. 11. The eve of the first anniversary of Kumaritashvili's death that shook the Vancouver Games.

VANOC worried about Whistler Sliding Centre safety in March 2009

More: VANOC worried about Whistler Sliding Centre safety in March 2009

Blame game not over

The much-anticipated report into the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili from the International Luge Federation was published at 3 a.m. Vancouver time on April 19.

Yeah, I woke up to be among the first to read it and write about it. Reporters who remained asleep didn't miss much. Maybe I was expecting too much from a typical European-based sports federation in self-preservation mode.

The 20-page document has few new revelations, no diagrams and no definitive timeline. (Note to FIL: a timeline should contain times. Your page 16 doesn't.) There is a photograph of Kumaritashvili on page 3 and kind words about the 21-year-old who died on the opening day of the 21st Winter Games. It details the donations to Kumaritashvili's family and does say that the family continues to wait for the VANOC insurance payment.

FIL continues to blame "driver error" and it describes how Kumaritashvili died. But it doesn't describe the why.

Tacked onto the story in the Telegraph by its Olympics editor Jacquelin Magnay is a fact box containing five unanswered questions.

Five unanswered questions
- Why was the steel pillar positioned directly next to the track and alongside a turn previously identified as dangerous?
- Why was the steel pillar unprotected without padding?
- Why wasn’t the track modified in the year before the Olympic Games when athletes had officially complained about the dangers?
- Why weren’t international sliders given more official practice time in the months leading up to the Games?
- Why did the International officials approve the track when excessive speed had already been identified as a problem?

Will the British Columbia Coroners Service enlighten us when it reports next month? Or will we have to wait for VANOC and FIL executives to testify in a Coroner's inquest or B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit?

This story is not over. As long as these questions remain, the sport of luge, the Whistler Sliding Centre and VANOC will live under a black cloud.